


Fortune

by chantefable



Category: Frontier Wolf - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Character Study, Gen, Introspection, Nature
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:28:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24100600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chantefable/pseuds/chantefable
Summary: Come spring, Shula is preparing to do her duty and participate in an initiation rite for the Votadini girls. A mix of her own wits and divine intervention has already shown her own path.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 6
Collections: Sutcliff Swap 2020





	Fortune

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Isis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/gifts).



> Lots of artistic licence is being taken with Celtic gods, who are many in number and have little surviving information about them.

The smell of thunder lingered in the air, sharp and prickly, and Shula's leather-clad feet dragged through the slick sodden soil even as she hastened back with an armful of firewood. The wind was rough and bit at her skin through all the layers of thickly woven wool, and her pierced earlobes burned and swelled around the metal.

Laughter carried from afar, and though it sounded muted, like a sick man's cough, because of how a mass of trees devours people's voices yet allows an impression of them to meander further than one might wish, it was still unmistakably a rough and unseemly expression of mean joy. Shula gritted her teeth and watched her step. She did not like the way Teleri behaved, brisk and bristling at every opportunity, and frequently foolhardy like an unbridled mare. Was it so hard for her to keep her mouth shut when she was told to? No respect for the time and place of contemplation, no obeisance to her elders, no consideration for her own sake, the heinous imp. Well, let her hang her jaw open and swallow cold air until her throat is red and sore. Shula was not going to fret and coddle her with sweet words and honeyed water, that was certain.

Some trees were budding, already speckled with tiny green dots bursting with life, while others stood still dormant, deceptively lifeless. Shula's gaze was drawn to their coarse trunks and morbidly splayed bare branches, a mixture of curiosity and eerie affinity fuelling her attention, for the dark trees did not seem serene in their nakedness: there was restraint in them, anger, a fatigue that had festered all through the winter and would not be lifted by a mere few licks of the pale spring sun. The forest spoke in scents, the moist bark and the persistent moss at the core, mixing with the earthy tang of old rot and crisp hints of the first new shoots, and Shula wished to listen to it. It was so much more meaningful than petty chatter and squabbles that must be awaiting her at the camp site. Whoever Teleri was laughing at, the matter surely had led to bad blood. Why couldn't some people watch what they said more closely? Or, for that matter, why were some so dead set on saying the most spiteful thing at the oddest possible time?

Vexed that her mind was fully troubled even before she was forced to face her burdensome responsibilities, Shula stopped and breathed, mouthing an oath as her craned her neck far back and stared upwards into the sky, pale blue and milky like an old man's eyes. Her heart would not settle, beating achingly fast, so she remained unblinking and unmoving, imagining the cords of her footwear turning into grass roots and tying her down to the ground, the twigs in her arms expanding and wrapping around her elbows, wrists and shoulders, extending like several sets of deer antlers into a tree crown powered by the juices of her body, fixing her in this very spot so she could look into the sky forever. 

She came to from her daydream with a full-body shudder, the kind that does not come from the cold but from awareness stirring deep within. Somewhat calmer, Shula resumed her footsteps, the remnants of the benign trance clinging to her like a shimmering veil. Maybe she was dizzy or misty-eyed, so much so that objects appeared distorted in the corner of her eye. Maybe she was alarmed and alert with all her senses heightened to their peak, so much that she could see every little speck and mark on the random little stones she stepped on. Maybe she had been kissed by Taranis, blessed with thunder, and would carry his roar and might, and meet a commander of the spears with a scarlet robe…

As a small child, Shula shrugged away both playful ribbing and cursory musings of the adults around her about how she would make a good chieftain's wife. And as she grew older, she was more consciously discomfited by the way her developing moods and habits were being evaluated, as if she were a mare to be traded. So she would look underfoot, and speak curtly, and would not wish for anything of the sort; if she was cut for it, it did not mean she had to want it.

And yet, as more autumns bled into winters with Shula coralling the rowdy and hapless girls, Shula keeping vigil to Lugh and observing the rites, Shula painstakingly learning the necessary skills of mending, cooking, weaving baskets and cloth, cleaving the carcasses and tending the soil – neither of which she was particularly good at or cared passionately for – she pondered softly, examining the shapeless idea from a distance until it revealed its form. She did not like any of the things she did, nor did she excel at them, but she enjoyed the purpose beyond them, the repetition, the meaning layered upon meaning: how the world was organised, and one thing led to another, like water running downhill when the thaw comes, like mead being passed round in a heavy ornate jug round the fire… one thing led to another, and things put together meant new things, and one thing replaced another, nothing permanent, everything coming and going, being replaced, in endless motion, like ripples when one throws a pebble in the water, like circles traced in potterware, like the hoops of the earrings that Morvidd the druid brought one day all the way from the seat of the High King at Traprain Law and said that there was no one else fit to wear them. It was perhaps a little strange that it had not hurt at all when they burned a needle in the flame of a fire-cradle that would normally be brought out to speak to Brigantia, or that neither of Shula's ears had bled, not even a little, when they pierced the flesh. She had not thought much of it then.

But later, when she had forged an opinion and would not shy away from it, she would think back at the day when she had put Morvidd's gold into her earlobes as an omen of her true fortune in life. She would make a good chieftain's wife. Just because everyone had been right about before it properly became true, or before it came to her, did not make it wrong to want it. And even though she did not feel ready just yet, and the time - or the chieftain - had not come just yet, did not mean that Shula had to resist what she felt she was on the cusp of. She could be – she would be – the one to grow strong and bloom forth with power, purpose, direction, one with the rhythm of the natural cycles of the seasons, of the gods and of people's lives.

Now, encumbered by the heavy load of unruly firewood in her arms, Shula merely treaded on the moss and made her way to the camp site where the gaggle of girls were doubtless whiling away the time until her return, and not pondering their desires and duties in serene contemplation, as was the custom. Nevertheless, they had the whole night ahead of them, when Shula, as the eldest among them, would be tending to the bright fire and watching the twirls of smoke, while the rest would sleep and seek their fortune in their dreams, should the goddess of prosperity bless them with her counsel.

Shula, with her fingers curled tight around the rough, slippery branches, felt like she had her own fortune firmly in her grasp. It merely had to show itself.


End file.
